the songs of wings flutter in the air,
            softly through the stars, begins the fear,
                                                                
                                                    the loss of who
                                              a question remains,

          a destain for the most precious,
          a party of cranes conversing in silence,
          a life that remains unbalanced.

If You Come to San Miguel
by Michael R. Burch

If you come to San Miguel
before the orchids fall,
we might stroll through lengthening shadows
those deserted streets
where love first bloomed ...

You might buy the same cheap musk
from that mud-spattered stall
where with furtive eyes the vendor
watched his fragrant wares
perfume your ******* ...

Where lean men mend tattered nets,
disgruntled sea gulls chide;
we might find that cafetucho
where through grimy panes
sunset implodes ...

Where tall cranes spin canvassed loads,
the strange anhingas glide.
Green brine laps splintered moorings,
rusted iron chains grind,
weighed and anchored in the past,

held fast by luminescent tides ...
Should you come to San Miguel?
Let love decide.

Published by Romantics Quarterly, Poetry Life & Times and Muddy River Poetry Review. Keywords/Tags: San Miguel, vacation, summer, love, affair, cafe, cafetucho, anhingas, cranes, sea, tides, bay, moorings, green, brine

This scrap piece of paper
Could have been a plane
But, instead, it's a poem by me;
Not burnt into vapour,
Folded like a crane,
Or anything else it could be.

This scrap piece of paper,
Now scrap more than ever,
Because I have added these words,
Which now start to taper,
Because I'm not clever
Enough to write of paper birds.

This scrap piece of paper
Has no more left to give
Apart from the next three forced lines;
It won't save the tapir,
Teach you how you should live,
Or help you pay old parking fines.

Dead, it’s dead.
Crafted pale, rough paper,
And it’s dead.
A new born yet immobile,
A silent structure.

Dead, but it has a head.
Slightly curved, pinched cheeks,
But it’s dead.
Wide wings yet tiny bodice,
An art carrying Alice.

Dead, and it’s red.
****** winged, folded paper,
On all feathers it bled.
Imagination has it flying,
Leaving traces of men false hoping.

The first in over sixty years
The whooping cranes are living wild
Now one young pair has laid an egg
And, too, with luck, will raise their child

They near Kissimmee were released
Beating the odds, survived to breed
A ray of hope they might increase
And ***** the armor of human greed

But cranes need water as do we
As still we pump the wetlands dry
Our chains of lakes sprout fat resorts
The river of grass condemned to die

Yet dare we dream we might reverse
This harsh inflicted damage done
Still apathy is our nation's curse
Which battles none has ever won

Today I cheer the whooping cranes
Who still have hope that they might see
Upon some far and distant day
Their offspring's offspring flying free

Like a cotton candy you're sticking on my lips,
I'm ripping you off with my teeth and melting you in my throat.
Soft, in the echoes of breaths
You are kissing my heart,
Sprinkling it  with cinnamon
And wrapping it in orange peel,
You're wearing my taste on your fingertips.
I'm finding you in every blink
When I forget what you look like in the fall
Standing under the thousands of paper cranes,
Hugging my loneliness
And forgetting yours.
Sometimes, you're gliding down my back
And dropping through the skin,
Burning, soft
In echoes of breaths,
In the salt void
Of a blink .